Technology news

Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised back in March that his electric car company, which also owns solar energy provider SolarCity, could help the state of South Australia with its routine weather-caused blackout issues. At the time, Musk said Tesla was so serious about the endeavor, he wrote on Twitter that the project could be completed within 100 days of a signed deal or it’d come free of charge. Now, Tesla is getting the opportunity to make good on that promise, as the company has won the gover

Should Qualcomm win its case against Apple, expect things to get messy. Since January, Apple and Qualcomm have been duking it out over what the latter believes to be patent infringement. The company believes Apple is currently infringing on six of its mobile device patents. Apple, for its part, thinks Qualcomm is attempting to fleece the company for millions instead of agreeing to a fair licensing deal. According to Qualcomm’s general counsel, Dan Rosenberg: Apple continues to use our tec

As far as video game adaptations go, Castlevania is certainly one of the best. In fact, the television show, which just premiered its first four episodes on Netflix, could serve as a starting point for future creatives tasked with adapting interactive entertainment into a passive, scripted program.
The series is a partial retelling of the 1990 Nintendo Entertainment System game, Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. The game itself features the rather minimal narrative of a vampire hunter, Tre

Super Senso is a kaleidoscope of colors and explosions. It’s a mobile player-versus-player turn-based strategy game that you could almost describe as friendly in appearance — until the other player destroys your base, and it’s all over in an instant. The matches are short and quick; Turbo Studios deliberately designed bouts to last only about 5 minutes.
Bite-sized battles are just one of many of Turbo’s design decisions. It wanted to pack in complexity while keeping

Sony’s PlayStation Vue service has gotten rid of its cheapest TV package, pushing the service’s starting point to $40 a month. The over-the-top service ended its Slim package, which started at $30 a month in cities where Sony didn’t have rights to the local NBC, ABC, and Fox affiliates.
The price hike pushes Vue past the cheapest offering from DirecTV Now and past YouTube TV, both of which start at $35 a month. A Sony representative told CNET the price hike has been in the work

Google Calendar users on iOS, rejoice: the official Google Calendar app for iPhone and iPad has finally gotten a Today widget, allowing you to preview upcoming events at a glance from the “Today’ section of the notification shade and lock screen, as spotted by 9to5Mac.
The widget can show the next two events on your calendar, and expand to show another four. Like other Today widgets, the preview can also be accessed on iPhone 6S and iPhone 7 devices by pressing down with 3D Touch on

In today’s episode of AI Screws Up Again, try typing in ‘black baby portraits’ into Google. You will not get many photos of black babies. After the first handful of results, you’ll get a bunch of photos of greyscale photos of (mostly) white babies. The same happens if you replace ‘baby’ with several other groups, including toddler – which is probably the worst – child, couple, etc. Even when the first few results aren’t so bad, as you’

Picture a building, maybe even one that you know fairly well. Now picture how it looks from the inside. The more you think about it, the harder it is to get the full scope of the building, right? There’s no way to see all of its constituent parts without sawing the thing completely in half. Or, you could just let computers do the work.That's how a company called Oddviz created the psychedelic video you see above of the Sofa Hotel in Istanbul. Using a photography technique called photogramm

Scientists have resurrected a long-extinct virus closely related to smallpox, and all it took was $100,000 and some mail-ordered chunks of DNA. The research, reported as news in the journal Science, could provide a road map to reconstructing the genome for one of the deadliest viruses the world has ever seen. And some scientists fear the information could help terrorists create dangerous biological weapons.
The resurrected virus is called horsepox, and it could be used to create new, safer small

Facebook and Google have confirmed their participation in a wide-scale net neutrality protest scheduled for July 12th, according to Fortune. The protest is being called the “Internet-wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality,” or “Day of Action” and “Battle for the Net” for short. It’s designed to be an illustrative example of the breadth and magnitude of opposition to the Federal Communication Commission’s recent regulatory behavior (or lack there

GaymerX Foundation launched last year as the advocacy arm of the GaymerX conference, a series of games convention for developers and fans in the LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual) community. Today, it announced that it’s officially a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
The indie gaming studio MidBoss runs both the event and the foundation. It also developed the cyberpunk adventure game 2064: Read Only Memories that released in January and pro

Every week, a slew of new music videos hits the web. Watching them at your desk is not time theft because you deserve it; think of it as a nice reward for surviving another work week. But what if you don’t have time to watch every video — maybe you have a deadline, a hungry pet, or other grown-up concerns. In consideration of your schedule, Lizzie and Kaitlyn bring you a series called One Video. Each week we’ll tell you “one video” you need to watch, why, and for ho

It’s July, which means that school will be back before you know it, and Microsoft is the first to kick off back to school discount season with its 2017 offerings. While there are certainly some nice deals on stuff like the Surface Pro 4, none of them really hold a candle to last year’s offer of a free Xbox One.The standout item on this year’s deal is a Surface Pro 4 bundle that includes a type cover for $999, or $899 if you’re a student with a valid .edu account. That&rsq

The Huawei Watch was easily one of the most attractive Android Wear watches last generation, so when Huawei unveiled the Watch 2, some users were disappointed the company had pivoted into a more sporty (read:uglier) aesthetic. Mainly, the screen was slightly smaller, and the design wasn’t as clean or minimal. I mean, just take a look at the ‘concrete’ grey-and-yellow design I tested; it’s nice to have some more options – and I’m sure some people will apprecia

It’s unusual for NASA to go viral, but that’s what happened this morning: it was hard to avoid a photo of Vice President Mike Pence appearing to make first contact with a piece of NASA equipment — that apparently wasn’t supposed to be touched. It looks to be a covering for the Orion capsule, which NASA is building to take humans into deep space. Fortunately, touching it probably won’t mess up future missions.
Here’s the back story on the photo: yesterday, Penc

Google said this week that it will join several major tech companies who are participating in a protest day dubbed the “Battle for the Net” on July 12th. Google told Inverse it would participate in the Day of Action, a movement to protest the FCC’s plans to abolish net neutrality. Other sites confirmed are Amazon, Reddit, Mozilla, Kickstarter, and Pornhub, among others. The ACLU also plans to lend its support. The Google spokesperson who spoke with Inverse

Today’s the day for Tesla. The automaker says it expects to complete production of “SN1” (or “Serial Number one”) of the Model 3, its first electric car for the masses. But the Model 3 isn’t just any car. Everything for the success of Tesla as a viable car company has been building up to this point. The Model 3 will define the future of the company — and the stakes for Tesla and CEO Elon Musk couldn’t possibly be higher.
Earlier this week, Musk twe

JStar, maker of smart assistant Josh.ai, has raised $8 million to create hardware for large homes to compete with Google Home, Amazon Echo, and other devices with intelligent assistants inside.
Today users can talk to Josh through Alexa-enabled devices, Google Home, and iOS and Android apps.
Above: A preview of the device being created by JStar with smart home assistant Josh inside
Like Alexa and Google Assistant, Josh is able to control smart home devices like sprinklers or lights and other mac

To truly make progress in your business, you need a robust marketing strategy that’s as integrated with your inventory as it is with your employees. Tying your business together with a solid sales and marketing strategy will allow you to measure data and create an actionable marketing strategy upon that data.  But if you really think about it, it’s pretty hard to create a strategy if you don’t know where you stand in the market (or how to measure it). That’s where d

OPINION: Underpromise and overdeliver — an easy concept to grasp, but not always to execute. When it comes to Windows 10, it’s particularly difficult to pull off, as Microsoft was once again reminded this week.
Windows 10 is a service, meaning it was built in a very different way from its predecessors so it can be regularly updated with not just fixes, but new features, too. Microsoft has released many such updates, including three major ones: November Update, Anniversary Update, and

Spotify is testing a new Driving Mode feature, according to some users who have posted on Reddit. A few users have been given access to a new feature that allows them to enable a driving mode which enlarges buttons, announces songs, and features voice controls (which aren’t active yet).Photo: Chris54721Photos posted by Reddit user Chris54721 show the new user interface, which features a car emblem in the bottom right corner of the now playing window, allowing users to enable the driving mo

Spider-Man: Homecoming has finally been released. And when you see it, you’re going to notice a lot of differences between this and previous cinematic versions of the Marvel character. One major change: his spider sense is hardly mentioned.
This might feel jarring because the animated cartoon show and the comics liked to make a show of the whole thing.Is this rooted in reality, though? Do spiders have psychic premonitions? Well, no, but as it turns out, spiders do have some pretty awesome

Action role-playing game Victor Vran is getting a semi-Hollywood treatment in the newest short film from Troma Entertainment, the cult film studio that created hammy gorefests like The Toxic Avenger (1984) and Cannibal! The Musical (1993).
Victor Vran features Diablo-esque action as the titular demon hunter fights off waves of demons in the fictional town Zagoravia. It was first released by developer Haemimont Games in 2015, and a year later, it got an expansion pack called Motörh

Apple’s first foray into scripted television programming is a Dr. Dre-fueled show called Vital Signs. The six-episode series should air this September, though Apple hasn’t released an official air date. Each episode, it’s rumored, is supposed to focus on a specific emotion. We’ve confirmed that JD McCrary, a young phenom, will feature in one called Innocence. McCrary is a 9-year-old singer/actor/dancer triple-threat evocative of the late Michael Jackson. He’s

EXCLUSIVE: Motorola’s lineup has already seen the addition of a new model line this year in the form of the Moto C and C Plus, and now the Lenovo subsidiary is preparing to announce its first special edition handsets, as well.
Marketing material for one of those devices, the Moto G5S Plus, was shared with VentureBeat, and it describes a phone that is larger than the standard G5 Plus, while also built of a more premium material and featuring enhanced imaging capabilities.
Possibly set

 Vidcode, a Y Combinator-backed startup focused on teaching teens how to code, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding for its curriculum. While there are a number of learn-to-code platforms out there today, Vidcode’s approach is to make coding more interesting to teens by connecting it to their existing interests – like Snapchat filters and memes – while also allowing… Read More

Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, we checked out an independent game festival Brazil, we played around with PlayerUnkown’s Battleground’s new zombie mode, and Rocket League got a new anniversary update.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
The DeanBeat: 9 industry leaders sound off on the state of gaming in 2017
PC Gaming Weekly: Strategy’s resurgence is no Paradox
Why Hearthstone’s Frozen Throne expansion matters to Warcraft

VB EVENT: The hype around artificial intelligence has launched a thousand hilarious jokes, from Terminator references to Space Odyssey HAL hilarity. That, plus a number of false starts and dead ends, has meant that the technology often hasn’t gotten the real-world focus and application that it deserves.
But there’s a core group of big-name brands and compelling thought leaders who are about to step on stage and explain how AI can deliver real-world results, in real-world applications